The Church and 'the men of the Church'
by Roberto de Mattei
Translated for Rorate caeli by Francesca Romana from
September 12, 2018
The courageous denunciation of ecclesiastical scandals by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has generated the consensus of many, but also the displeasure of others, convinced that everything discrediting the representatives of the Church should be covered up by silence.
This desire to safeguard the Church is understandable when the scandal is an exception. There is the risk in that case of generalizing, by saddling the behavior of a few onto everyone .
Quite different is the case when immorality is the rule, or at least is a widespread way of living accepted as the norm. In this case public denunciation is the first step towards the necessary reform of “morals”.
Breaking the silence is part of the duties of a pastor, as St. Gregory the Great admonishes:
“What in fact is the fear of a pastor to state the truth, if not the turning of his back on the enemy with his silence? If, instead, he fights in defense of his flock, he builds a bastion for the House of Israel against its enemies. For this the Lord through the mouth of Isaiah admonishes: “Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet” (Isaiah, 58,1).
At the origins of a guilty silence there is often the lack of distinction between the Church and the men of the Church, be they the simple laity, bishops, cardinals or Popes.
One of the reasons for this confusion is precisely the prominence of the authorities involved in the scandals. The higher their dignity, the more the tendency to identify them with the Church, attributing good and evil indifferently to the one and the other.
In reality the Good is the sole business of the Church, whereas all the Evil is due to the men who represent Her. For this the Church cannot be defined as sinful, Father Roger T. Calmel O.P. (1920-1998) wrote:
She asks forgiveness to the Lord not for the sins She has committed, but for the sins committed by Her children, insofar as they do not listen to Her as Mother.” (Breve apologia della Chiesa di sempre, Editrice Ichtys, Albano Laziale 2007, p. 91).
All the members of the Church whether of the teaching or student parts, are men, with their own nature, wounded by original sin. Baptism does not render the faithful faultless, nor do Holy Orders render the members of the Hierarchy holy.
The Pope himself can sin and fall into error, except in faith and morals when he has the charism of infallibility. [But Bergoglio's most egregious misdeeds precisely have to do with his words and deeds affecting faith and morals - and his followers could well say that in those respects, he must be considered 'infallible'.]
It must be said, moreover, that
the faithful do not constitute the Church, as happens in human societies, created by the members that form them and dissolved as soon as they separate. To say “We are Church” is false, since the belonging of the baptized to the Church, does not derive from their will: it is Christ Himself who invites us to belong to His flock, by repeating to everyone: “You have not chosen me but I have chosen you” (John 15, 16).
The Church founded by Jesus Christ has a Human-Divine constitution: human as it has a material and passive component, made up of all the faithful, part of both the clergy and the laity; supernatural and divine for Her soul. Jesus Christ, Her Head, is Her foundation and the Holy Spirit is Her supernatural propeller.
The Church therefore is not holy because of the holiness of Her members, but it is Her members that are holy thanks to Jesus Christ Who directs Her and the Holy Spirit Who gives life to Her. From them comes all Good, that is, all that is “true, noble, just, pure, lovable, honorable and worthy of praise” (Phil. 4,8).
And from the men of the Church comes all the Evil: disorders, scandals, abuse of power, violence, turpitudes and sacrileges.
The Passionist theologian Enrico Zoffoli (1915-1996) who dedicated many fine pages to this theme wrote;
"So we have no interest in covering up the faults of bad Christians, of unworthy, cowardly, inept, dishonest and arrogant priests. The intent to defend the cause and mitigate their responsibilities would be ingenuous and useless along with minimizing the consequences of their errors, having recourse to historical contexts and singular situations in order then to explain away and absolve everything” (Chiesa e uomini di Chiesa, Edizioni Segno, Udine 1994, p. 41).
Today there is great filth in the Church, as the then Cardinal Ratzinger said during the Via Crucis of Good Friday 2005, which preceded his rise to the papacy.
“How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to Him!"
Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò’s testimony is praiseworthy, since,
by bringing to light this filth, he renders the work of purification of the Church more urgent.
It must be [made] clear that the conduct of unworthy bishops or priests is not inspired by the dogmas or morals of the Church, but constitutes their betrayal, as it represents a negation of the law of the Gospel.
The world that accuses the Church for Her faults accuses Her of transgressing a moral order: but in the name of what law and doctrine does the world claim to indict the Church? The philosophy of life professed by the modern world is relativism to the degree that there are no absolute truths and the only law of man is to be devoid of [all] laws; the practical consequence is hedonism according to which the only form of possible happiness is the gratification of one’s desires and the satisfaction of one’s instincts.
How can the world, devoid of principles as it is, judge and condemn the Church? The Church has the right and duty to judge the world because She has an absolute and immutable doctrine.
The modern world, child of the principles of the French Revolution, develops with coherence the ideas of the libertine Marquis de Sade (1740-1814): free love, free blasphemy, total freedom to deny and destroy every bastion of Faith and Morals, as in the days of the French Revolution when the Bastille, where Sade was a prisoner, was destroyed. The outcome of all this is the dissolution of morality, which has destroyed the foundations of civil society and over the last two centuries has created the darkest age in history.
The life of the Church is also the history of betrayals, defections, apostasies and insufficient correspondence with Divine Grace. But this tragic weakness always goes along with extraordinary faithfulness: the falls, even the most terrifying, of many members of the Church, are interlaced with the heroism of the virtue seen in many other of Her children.
A river of sanctity gushes out of the side of Christ and runs flowing through the course of the centuries:
- the martyrs who faced the wild animals in the Coliseum;
- the hermits who abandoned the world to live a life of penitence; - the missionaries who go to the ends of the earth;
- the intrepid confessors of the faith who combat schisms and heresies;
- the contemplative religious who sustain the defenders of the Church and Christian civilization with their prayers;
- all those, who, in different ways, have conformed their lives to the Divine one.
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus wanted to gather up all these vocations in one supreme act of love to God.
The saints are different from one another, but what they all share is union with God: and this union, which never flags, makes it so that the Church, prior to being One, Catholic and Apostolic, is first of all perfectly Holy.
The holiness of the Church doesn’t depend on the holiness of Her children; it is ontological, given that it is connected to Her very nature.
For the Church to be called holy it is not necessary that all Her children live a saintly life; it is enough that a part, even a small part, thanks to the vital flow of the Holy Spirit, remain heroically faithful to the law of the Gospel during times of trial.
We are all baying in vain at the moon when we insist on getting 'clarity' from Jorge Bergoglio, a man who calls on his flock to 'make a mess' - create chaos, really - because he seems to thrive on chaos, the chaos of his thought and ethics. Nonetheless, Fr Scalese gives it another try...
A time for clarity
Translated from
September 12, 2018
Italia Oggi had an article yesterday by Alessandra Nucci about the developments which have thrown the Church into a turmoil unprecedented in our day.
It is singular in that it takes off from the Vigano Testimony to recall the dossier on the existence of a ‘gay lobby’ in the Curia prepared for Benedict XVI by the three retired cardinals (Herranz, Tomko and De Giorgi) he commissioned to investigate for him. A dossier that Benedict XVI passed on to his successor
[at their first meeting in Castel Gandolfo on March 21, 2013, less than two weeks after Bergoglio was elected pope].
The article actually focuses more on the previous pontificate than this one, and recalls its most painful moments: how it became impossible for Benedict XVI to address the students and faculty of Rome’s La Sapienza University; the reaction to the Regensburg lecture; the Williamson case; the profanation of the tombs of the Belgian bishops in Brussels
[by civilian investigators looking into records of sex abuse cover-ups]; the de-activation of the ATMs inside the Vatican by the Banco d’Italia; the various stories about the IOR
[none of which even came near the magnitude of the 1981 scandal that saw he Church pay out $250 million to bank depositors who lost their money with the crash of the Mafia-backed Banco Ambrosiano with which the IOR had partnered]; and the Vatileaks ‘scandal’.
[It reads like a sparse list of truly ‘venial sins’ compared to the unending list of ‘mortal sins’ attributed so far to this pontificate.]
She also adds a couple of events that happened after Benedict XVI’s retirement: a theologian’s [Andrea Grillo] call for him “to leave the Vatican and stay silent forever” after he wrote a Foreword for a book by Cardinal Sarah; and Mons. Dario Vigano’s inept and ill-advised attempt to claim that Benedict XVI had endorsed a series of little books written by no-name theologians to ‘celebrate’ Jorge Bergoglio’s theology.
By recalling all of the above, in addition to developments in the past two months, one realizes that the problem is not confined only to the question posed by Mons. Carlo Maria Vigano, namely, what Pope Francis knew about ex-Cardinal McCarrick’s ‘secret life’ and whether Benedict XVI had, in fact, imposed disciplinary sanctions on McCarrick.
The problem is far vaster and does not just concern this pontificate but also the preceding ones. Pandora’s box has been pried open and nothing can close it now, because any such attempt is doomed to fail.
I will admit that I have never been fanatic about transparency at all costs. I belong to the old school that believes in not washing dirty laundry in public. But having arrived where we now are, I believe it is absolutely necessary to clear up all questions. I do not think silence serves anything at this time, nor attempts to minimize the weight and scope of recent developments, nor maneuvers to divert public attention to other issues (the economy, the environment, the migrant crisis, whatever), nor the attempts to discredit the ‘enemy’ (Mons Carlo Vigano, in this case).
Now is the time to take the bull by the horns and face the problem courageously. Did not Pope Francis write this in
Evangelii gaudium?:
227. When conflict arises, some people simply look at it and go their way as if nothing happened; they wash their hands of it and get on with their lives. Others embrace it in such a way that they become its prisoners; they lose their bearings, project onto institutions their own confusion and dissatisfaction and thus make unity impossible.
But there is also a third way, and it is the best way to deal with conflict. It is the willingness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process. “Blessed are the peacemakers!” (Mt 5:9).]
Well, that is exactly what must be done now. It is not about defending the pope from his ‘enemies’. He may even be the first victim in this situation [Really, Fr S! How????] and therefore, he must be helped to overcome it. It is necessary to clear up things now not just about McCarrick but also about:
- The 2012 Vatileaks
- The report made by Cardinals Herranz, Tomko and Di Giorgi
- Benedict XVI’s renunciation
- The ‘gay lobby’ in the Church
- The Sankt-Gallen Mafia\
These are all matters that await clarification. The dirt can no longer be just swept under the rug. It can no longer be kept hidden by the veil of pontifical secrecy, hoping that it will soon be forgotten, and things can resume as usual.
When we sin, and we wish to be forgiven, we must first humbly acknowledge our sin. The same thing goes for the Church – if the institutional Church wishes to emerge from this situation, then she must lay open the cards. Meanwhile, what is to be done, concretely?
Some bishops have recently proposed a suspension of the scheduled synodal assembly on ‘young people’ and to hold instead a synodal assembly on sexual abuse and the responsibility of the bishops therein. A proposal not to be dismissed offhand – because today
bishops appear ‘de-legitimized’ to even deal with the problems of ‘young people’. Why don’t they occupy themselves with their own present predicament? Though I personally think that the problem is too vast and too grave for a synodal assembly to confront.
Perhaps convoking an ecumenical council is called for, because it is only right that all the bishops of the world should be involved in facing the crisis that has engulfed the Church. A council that will neither be doctrinal nor pastoral, but exclusively disciplinary, which will examine all the aspects of the present crisis with a view to restoring what John Paul I called, in his installation homily, ‘the great discipline of the Church”. Extreme evils deserve extreme means.
There can no longer be subterfuges. It is time to face reality unflinchingly, without fear of denouncing evil where it has ensconced itself, doing so with humility and courage, trusting in the grace of God to be able to take the necessary measures to heal the ecclesial body.
It is time to proceed to a true reform of the Church – not ideological, but moral.
Meanwhile, get set for a new round of hefty mudslinging against the Church....
3,677 sex abuse cases
reported in 1946-2014
involving German priests
BERLIN, Sept. 12, 2018 (AP) - A leading German magazine says a report on sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church in Germany details 3,677 abuses cases by Catholic clergy between 1946 and 2014.
Spiegel Online wrote Wednesday the report it obtained – commissioned by the German Bishops Conference and researched by three universities – concludes that more than half of the victims were 13 or younger and most were boys. Every sixth case involved rape and at least 1,670 clergy were involved.
The German Bishops Conference had no immediate comment but said it was preparing a response.
The Catholic Church has been struggling with sex abuse by its clergy for decades.
An investigation earlier this year in the United States found rampant sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by about 300 Catholic priests in Pennsylvania.
I bet the report was immediately scoured for anything that may have involved Joseph and/or George Ratzinger in any way! (Or Gerhard Mueller, or Georg Gaenswein, for that matter.) Surely the AP would have headlined it if they found anything.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/09/2018 13:45]